Tuesday, 11 April 2017

NERUDA: CHASING THE POET (LONDON FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW)

Neruda, which played
in the directors' competition at Cannes and the official competition
at the London Film Festival, and is now on release, is set around
the thirteen months Pablo Neruda, poet and Communist Party Senator,
spent hiding in Chile after President Gonzalez Videla turned on the
leaders of the broad left coalition that elected him, declared the
communists illegal, and began rounding them up for incarceration. But
Pablo Larrain's film is neither thriller nor bio-pic. Rather it is a
poetic essay in art, character, and politics, one that seems
structured not by its narrative but by Neruda's poems themselves.

This becomes evident
in an opening scene where Senator Neruda debates his colleagues in an
august chamber that turns out to be the urinals in a men's room, like
you might find in London men's clubs or Turkish baths. It's as
surreal as anything in Bunuel, and reminds us that Neruda's early
poetry, influenced by his time in Spain, was surrealistic. It's a
tour de force which contrasts with another early scene inside a wild
party thrown by Neruda and his wife Delia, who makes him up for his
costume as all around them champagne flows and naked female breasts
bounce. There we're reminded of the Bunuel who dismantles the
bourgeoisie yet is very much a part of it. This is one of the film's
key issues: Neruda the communist not only lives a privileged life,
but Neruda the poet's value to the party is such that he is literally
protected from the very real discomfort most of his comrades now
face.

The movie quickly
moves to a noirish thriller format, as Neruda is chased by the young
detective Oscar Peluchonneau, who may well have been put on the case
because he is not expected to succeed. Oscar is the narrator of the
film, and his own story serves as a sort of convex mirror to
Neruda's: he is the illegitimate son of a famed policeman, an
outsider drawn to Neruda's work even as he hunts him down. At times
this is superbly shot as noir by Sergio Armstrong; it also verges on
an almost Tom & Jerry kind of parody: Neruda escapes detection in
a brothel by donning dress and wig; in a photographer's shop by
putting his head inside a frame. There are a number of scenes where party photographers set up seemingly comic staged shots to use as propaganda. And in the final chase, as Neruda
crosses the Andes on horseback, Oscar pursues in a motorcyle sidecar,
shot against a patently cheesy back-projection. But now this comic effect
sets us up for the real poignancy of the denouement, itself shot with
austere beauty in the snowy mountains. Perhaps this is what all the comedy is doing.

Delia tells Oscar
that he might just be a character in a Neruda story; the poet after
all was a huge fan of thrillers. But Oscar may also believe that
Neruda is a character in his story. Both these fantasies are, in
their way true; this is another of Larrain's themes, and one which is
reinforced by the editing, by Herve Schneid, which breaks up scenes
yet keeps them flowing, as if to suggest a timeless quality, a sense
that the situations are unchanging, almost pre-destined. The politics
of the right seems locked into a sort of Chilean machismo which
Neruda, in this movie, specifically plays against. He speaks to women
through his poetry, which again is pointed out by his sad love scene
with Delia; his disinterest disappears when he is in the brothel,
though here he merely drinks and recites. The timeless theme is
reinforced by the mention, in passing, of the commandant of one of
the concentration camps set up for the communists and union members,
he is a young colonel named Augusto Pinochet.

He's helped by the
performances. Remembering this is not a bio-pic, some details change;
for example Delia was actually twenty years older than Neruda. Luis
Gnecco as Neruda sometimes seems to old, too soft; but he can
transform himself quickly. Mercedes Moran as Delia is perfect, the
aristocratic Argentinian artist who loves the poet. And Gael Garcia Bernal is
just as good as the perhaps deluded Oscar; he is a cypher we cannot
quite figure out in the way that we think we know Neruda himself. The
film proceeds at a dreamy pace for an erzatz thriller, and there is
perhaps too much repetition is very similar scenes; one too many
brothels and a thousand party arguments behind.

But it is bookended
by brilliance, and the coda, with Neruda in Paris being introduced by
Picasso, is another telling touch. We recall the controversary around
Picasso's own special place with the Resistance, and when he
introduces Neruda as an underground resistance fighter we know how
false the description is, even as we see shots of those who aided him
escape Chile as they languish in prison. I thought of the fate of
Varian Fry, ignored after rescuing dozens of major artists from the
Nazis. But in these scenes it is a different, younger and
stronger Neruda who reads to adoring French crowds: Gnecco has pulled
his character into that new role.

Neruda the film is
indeed like the poetry of its subject, and it builds like a shelf
full of his poems. Underneath, it examines the writer's place, his
heart, and his life in a way a more straightforward biography might
not.